Anchor
by toroj
Summary: Post-reichenbach, the continuation of "Ordinary people". Translation: Serathe


Polish title: Kotwica

Author: toroj

Translation: Serathe

Betareading: AnimaBaya

**Anchor**

(the continuation of "Ordinary people")

Two sugar cubes... The spoon makes ten perfect circles inside the teacup... Perfect, thin fingers - of a violinist, a pianist, a prince... (A gynecologist, a wicked imp whispers to me) - take a hold of the cup handle; the porcelain trinket ascends to Sherlock's perfect lips.

The haematomas on both his cheeks are ripening, soon the bruises will spread around the eye sockets and tomorrow he will look like a common raccoon or I don't know a thing about medicine.

Damn it, maybe I really don't; if there, on that ill-fated pavement, flooded with false blood, I mistook him for a corpse!

I prayed for a miracle and there I have it. A fucking miracle is sitting across from me explaining how he managed to fool me. Me and the whole of England. (Me! Above all - Me!) His eyes sparkle like the fireworks on the fifth of November. His words reach me like through a thick layer of cotton wool. I am watching the resurrected consulting detective - yes, yes, the only one in the world - and simultaneoulsy I am under the illusion that a spectre of a little boy in shorts overlaps him. "Look, daddy, I can ride a bike. Look what I made by myself, Mycroft: a kite... an electrolysis... a poison... vivisection of a neighbour's cat... John, I jumped from the roof by myself...". The five year old ego of the younger Holmes demands attention, admiration, praise and a lollipop. After all, I've seen it before, but in some way I was blind. All of his "I'm bored", wall-shooting, whims, fancies and sulks. Going after crime scenes like a scout playing hare and hounds. For some reason I've been justifying those excesses of his by the typical eccentricities of every genius. Because he is a genius, undoubtedly, but at the same time he is a spoiled, egoistic brat, whom I want to put over my knee and tan his hide with my military be... Jesus Christ, what am I thinking?

I'm angry at him. I'm furious. One would think that the army toughens people up, that the mission - "a trip to the mountains", as the old troopers say - should make me immune to death, but it's not true. Firstly, the internship at the surgical ward makes a young doctor aware of how fragile a human being is, and then the war shows him how fleeting. Out there, on the desert, I had seen how people can vanish in mere seconds. Here - and then gone... I myself have looked into the hole of nothingness and backed up at the last moment. The thought of someone jumping into it by himself is unacceptable to me. Sick. Blasphemous. That Sherlock did that to himself of his own accord. That he did that to me.

"Do you know why I'm still living here?" I make a sweeping, vague gesture, involving the fireplace, the mirror, the stuffed horned head on the wall and the yellow bullet-ridden face spray-painted above the couch simultaneoulsy.

"You live here, because this flat is comfortable and conveniently located. Mrs. Hudson preferred the old, placid, reliable tenant to a new and unreliable one and Mycroft was still paying half of the rent, so she didn't lose any money", explained Sherlock enthusiastically.

"You're wrong. I would have moved out the day after the funeral, but I just couldn't."

Sherlock looks a me, slightly tilting his head. He is silent, waiting for me to continue. I think he has just jammed on to something he cannot break down into its constituent parts with that sharp, terabyte brain of his, which is clothed in a soft, fragile, casing only by accident and capable of bleeding...

"When I got hit in Afghanistan", I continue, "I thought it had ruined my life. It turned out that I was merely knocked down a little. Brushed by the train of life, as they say. But... what you... did-" my voice starts to quiver idiotically and I can't help it. "It broke me. Into pieces. Before, it was much easier. I could be treated, rehabilitated, attend a therapy, exercise... I knew I will get out of it. That it's reversible. And here... For almost five... m-months I have been trying to put m-myself together and I still don't have all of the pieces..." I take a deep breath. "I haven't been looking for a new place, because I wasn't able to manage even my daily activities like eating or washing socks, let alone to look for some affordable bedsit in a decent neighbourhood. And YOU did that to me!

Although I didn't tell him that he had brought me into the light and the air from a blank cubbyhole with no doors or windows, into that big, dangerous, wonderful world of his. And when he left, the walls closed around me again and it was even worse. Much, much worse, because I have tasted freedom and this time I knew that no angel in a worn out tweed coat will appear to help me.

"You knew why I had to do this" Sherlock says. "After all I have left you a letter."

"What letter? Where?"

Greyish-blue eyes gleam with irritation.

"I said it very clear: 'This phone call is my note.' You didn't listen to the recording?"

"No..." I whisper, "The police... doesn't make the material evidence... available to outsiders."

"But you are not an outsider. Damn Lestrade..." Sherlock drawls, putting down the teacup.

I clear my throat with a cough.

"He told me why you had to do it. Later on. He said that Moriarty threatened you with something. But that didn't make anything easier. Not at all. Just that after the real face of Moriarty had been shown, the papers stopped dragging you through the mud."

Sherlock smiles widely and rubs his hands.

"And now everything is getting back on track. I am sure an interesting case will come up soon-"

"No."

"-and we will have something to do again..." he finishes of his own momentum. "No?" He is surprised. Why I'm not surprised that he's suprised, hmm?

"I said: no. YOU will have something to do." I say firmly. "I AM going back to work. A normal one, in a hospital. Maybe I'll even work admissions. And I'm moving out."

For the first time, I watch Sherlock shrink. Maybe I'm having a hallucination caused by a nervous shock, but he seems to be smaller, shorter and even thinner... Not a mean feat for a man who eats a meal - sorry, refuels - two to three times a week.

"I thought you like it, John. You liked it. The risk, the riddles, the pursuits... They were great fun."

"'Were'. Especially when you locked me in Baskerville and I nearly died of a heart attack. I forgave you then, but now... no. It's too much. I am... I was your friend." I shake my head, trying to appease my own thoughts, which are screaming in protest. "Allegedly the one and only. And you hadn't trusted me. You even let Molly in on that secret. Molly, Mycroft, his people, maybe even that fucking cyclist, who ran into me! A herd of sidekicks, but not me!" I'm shaking again. "I was only supposed to stand down there like a fool and watch your big, lofty show. Only today: a performance called "Suicide". Starring Sherlock Holmes, a celebrity of the London scene. I was making an idiot out of myself, and you didn't even blink!"

"I was busy."

"With what, for God's sake?"

"Not breathing."

I've already fixed both his cheeks. What now? His nose? Teeth...? In spite of what Irene Adler once said.

Sherlock lounges in his armchair, stretching out his long legs, and puts his fingertips together in his distinctive gesture. He will soon close his eyes, withdraw and go to his "Mind Palace". I stand up.

"Anyway, congratulations. Great show. I was a hundred percent fooled."

He doesn't close his eyes and I can almost see the cogs turning in his head through the holes of his pupils.

"Feelings... They are always difficult" he speaks, remaining motionless. "Mycroft has that problem too."

"A problem with what?" I fail to bite my tongue on time.

"With trust. He had always guarded me. He still does even now. He doesn't think I can handle those stupid things. Clothing, food, money, giving up smoking... It's the same for both Mycroft and you. It is true that I sometimes cannot handle people, but objects are easy."

I suddenly feel ashamed. He is right, his brother and I treat him like a child, in spite of him being only two years younger than me. It is also true that I am sometimes under the impression it's not two years, but twenty, nevertheless... Wasn't I, myself, angry at all those overprotective, nosy guests? "John, how's your leg? John, are you taking your meds? John, you should eat better. John, how's your therapeutic blog?" Anyway, it doesn't matter. Holmes is a grown man and it's time for him to do the shopping by himself. Time for me to change the address...

"John? I wasn't faking it."

I sit back, involuntarily. In silence. It's time for Sherlock to speak and he does, very slowly despite his capability, carefully choosing his words like he was pulling them from a deep warehouse, dusting them and pedantically putting in a row.

"I wasn't faking it." He repeats. "I had never been frightened in my life. Moriarty... He was an element of chaos. He had plans inside plans wrapped in plans, I could have missed something or he could have started to improvise. He could have been lying. Something could have gone wrong. That goodbye - it was real. I was afraid that I was speaking to you for the last time. I was afraid I will land poorly. Or that I couldn't even dare to jump. I was terrified, John. If it wasn't for you, standing down there, I am not sure I would have managed it. And then you came running, took my hand and I knew, that everything is good. I was afraid that I... would lose you.

Lose? Why "lose"? If someone was to lose someone, it was me losing him! And then the enlightenment falls over me like am ice-cold wave, as if someone threw a bucket of water over my head. I feel my forehead sweating, but I'm cold. Now I know what Greg meant, when he tried to explain the situation to me - clumsily, beating around the bushes and omitting the most important thing. What could be a bargaining card of so immense a weight that it would force Sherlock Holmes to commit suicide? A double one, if the experts, who examined the body of the consulting criminal, were to be believed. Definitely not some photos made with mobile phones by some crazy fangirls! Only someone's life - his brother's, Mrs. Hudson's... Mine..? That was why Greg Lestrade remained silent, trying to spare me the sense of guilt. The gun I used to kill the cabby is at the bottom of the Thames, but after all I bought another one...

"I don't like when people touch me." Sherlock tries a different track. Yeah, so hard to notice. "I have a problem with that. With hand shaking, patting... It causes me discomfort." Like most of the people with Asperger's. I could have written a doctoral thesis on you, my dear Holmes. "There are very few people whose touch doesn't bother me. John, what I want to say is... You can touch me.

Sweet Lord... I feel the urge to plug my ears, and then clean them with a duster - pulled through the middle of my head - and pulling it from both ends. Although men are supposedly "not his area", but girls too, and he likes his animals only dead... John, just stop thinking about it!

I must have a rather peculiar expression, because Sherlock throws me a gloomy glance, and then he closes his eyes and just wanders. At least that situation is familiar to us both and in some perverse way calming.

I'm clearing away the cups and the pot in silence. I'm washing the dishes and then going upstairs to my room. I have enough thrill for one day.

A proper night is a deep, impenetrable, almost cosmic blackness, where the hardness of the ground under the soles indicates which side is down and the scattered pearl barley of stars - which is up. If you're lucky and the weather's nice.

The night in the city is not a real night. It's just a time when the lights change and when _Homo sapiens britannica_ goes to sleep. Or doesn't.

Despite the drawn curtains there is an orange light of a street lamp filtering through. The darkness deprives things of color and softens their outlines, but I can clearly see the bedside table and the clock, whose red digits show that it's 01:55 and cast a pinkish glow on a white bottle of Ambien. I wonder if I should take another pill. I know I should be sleeping, but if I'll force myself to sleep with a drug... Which dream will come this time? The black marble? The bloodstained pavement? Or maybe this brain of mine will produce some other, much worse scenario?

I didn't hear the footsteps on the stairs but just the pulling on the door handle. I close my eyes in a flash. Sherlock, if he wants to, can walk as quiet as a cat through some eggshells and I can bet he is now standing above me and staring.

"You are not sleeping", he states.

I've just won a toaster.

"But I am", I declare with my eyes still closed.

"You are denying the obvious. A breath of a sleeping man has a lower frequency, it's deeper. Besides, when you sleep, you huffpuff.

"I do what?"

"Huffpuff. I have a recording in my phone somewhere... I'll play it to you when Lestrade gives it back."

"Sherlock, out of my room! It's still mine, I've paid till the end of the month!" I turn to face the wall with my nose and pull the quilt over my ear. For a moment I am hoping that he listens, but no! Quite the opposite, I feel the mattress dipping next to me. The bed is wide and comfortable (Thanks, Mrs. Hudson!), but not double! I breathe deeply and count from ten till one to not burst. Actually, the most logical action would be to brace my knees against the wall and make a quick push, making this prat land on the hard floor with a nice thud.

"You have your own bed downstairs. It's wider and more comfortable than mine", I drawl angrily.

Two seconds of silence.

"We can move", Sherlock proposes in a conciliatory manner, while trying to steal my pillow, but I guard it like it's my independency. No, Sherlock Holmes just won't allow for him to be ignored.

I turn to face him. Thank God, he is completely dressed.

"Take your shoes off my linen!"

"Apologies." He slightly changes his position, resting his heels against the foot of the bed.

"Sherlock, I realize that there are many stories about how the life in the barracks really are, but this is absolutely inapropriate! I'm heterosexual. And even if I was not, I wouldn't be interested in YOU!"

"I have a different theory in this matter", Sherlock mumbles, and I wonder unwittingly if I would be capable of smothering a man with a pillow.

"The war in Afghanistan is nothing compared to living with you", I say bitterly.

"John... I don't know how to tell it for you to understand. I want you to stay. The touching... I was serious. Don't move out."

"You want me to stay, so you offer me sex? You waded into my bed at night and-" I am simply speechless.

Sherlock sighs.

"Sometimes I have a feeling that I am talking to an alien."

And I am supposed to be the alien here?

"Mycroft... I think he loves me, but I terrify him. Since childhood I was his "duty". He felt responsible for me. And being responsible for himself, his younger brother and England simultaneously is maybe too much for him. Two years ago I have been experimenting with some narcotics. To not go into detail, it did not end... well."

Yes, I've heard. Hospital and detox, where you made two therapists have a nervous breakdown. The third one showed remarkable survival instincts and signed the discharge papers after spending only two days with the patient.

"I think he would had been relieved if this ended there, on the pavement next to Bart's", Sherlock continues in a calm voice and I feel pins and needles in my neck. "John... It's hard to be my brother, it's very hard to be my flatmate or a friend, but it's really damn hard to be... me."

I don't know what to say to that, so I keep my trap shut. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth... I would settle for inheriting the whole bed.

"You have no idea how lucky you are, John. So ordinary. So simple. One, mostly two thoughts at a time. A trifle. Mine swarm like vicious wasps, racing in different directions, creating patterns - and there are so many of them I don't know which thread to follow. I have tried cocaine, morphine; it helps, but numbs me. Nicotine was better but in this bloody country a smoker is treated worse than a black man in the apartheid. I... John, I sometimes feel as if I'm going to fly away. Like a balloon - you understand me? - or like a drifting ghost ship. The Flying Dutchman that will never call at any port. I jumped, I damaged my wrist and my ankle, it hurt like hell, but I had to play dead even when I wanted to howl. And my only thought was..."

"Will the sniper blow my brains out", I finish quietly.

He just breaths spasmodically. No, Sherlock, maybe I'm simple, but not stupid.

"Please don't move out", he repeats after a while. It sounds, in some way... helplessly.

I pull my hand from under the duvet and blindly seek for his hand. It is cold like a dead man's and when I hold it, Sherlock slightly clenches his fingers.

"John?"

"Yes?"

"I think you have pretty hands."

"Thank you."

It's not an erotic allusion. It's just Sherlock Holmes in one of the aspects of his "sherlockuity". He decided to be nice and paid me a compliment, as usual with no pondering over the whole wide range of possible subtexts and innuendos.

His fingers are cold as ice, but soon they become warmer in my hand. We both lay like this, shoulder to shoulder, on a too narrow bed - me in cheap cotton pyjamas, covered with a duvet, and him on top of it, in a designer jacket, trousers with creases and even in shoes. One declared hetero and one... who the hell knows - we hold hand like two girls at a confirmation. We must look really idiotic. I want to laugh. I smile to that doubtful city night, time passes and then maybe I fall asleep, because suddenly I am at a symphony concert. All the orchestra is dressed in black tailcoats, only Sherlock, playing a solo on his violin, is wrapped in a sheet like in a toga. If I know him well, he is not wearing an underwear. And the orchestra plays The Blue Danube.

I wake up when it's still horribly early; it's barely getting light outside the window. I feel stiff, as I didn't change my position. Sherlock's hand still lies on mine. It's only now I notice that his nails are deformed a little. Years ago he must have been biting them until they bled. My hands are stronger, with shorter fingers. I'm generally shorter, more stocky and solidly built. Stronger. More down to earth, reasonable. No ship or even the poorest leaky old tube cannot go without a solid anchor or it will run into a reef and sink.

I am Sherlock's anchor.

And him?

I think he is my sail.

I look at his face. He is still asleep. His mouth is slightly open, his eyes move around rapidly under the eyelids. The REM stage, he dreams about something.

I was right, he does look like a raccoon.


End file.
